Overview
- The national monitoring report released Thursday by GLAMOS and the Swiss Academy found Swiss glaciers lost about 5–5.5% of their ice volume in 2026, marking the second-largest single-year percentage drop on record.
- The report says nearly 20% of Swiss glacier ice has vanished since 2021, based on end-of-summer field measurements at 23 reference glaciers extrapolated to roughly 1,300 Swiss glaciers.
- Researchers measured a loss of about 2.2 trillion litres of water between July and September 2026, an amount equal to more than four times Swiss households' annual drinking water use, temporarily boosting runoff while reducing long-term summer reserves.
- Several small glaciers were documented as having disappeared permanently, and major ice bodies including Aletsch and Rhone recorded their biggest or near-biggest melts, with average thickness declines of about 2.5–4 metres and up to 10 metres at some tongues.
- Scientists attribute the loss to a very low-snow winter followed by long, intense heatwaves and link the trend to anthropogenic climate change, warning the shrinkage raises risks for future water supply, hydropower generation, Alpine tourism, and slope and ice-collapse hazards.